Incoming Links and Google Rankings

How Important are Incoming Links for Google Rankings?

Many website owners & webmasters are not sure how to go about gaining incoming links so that their sites rank well in the search engine results. Google, Yahoo and MSN all calculate link popularity as one part of their search algorithms. So building link popularity is an important part of getting recognition and strong placement in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Link popularity is a count of how many web pages point to one of your web pages.

The Google Version of Link Popularity

PageRank (PR) is a Google tool that gives a value to every web page on the Internet, with 12 possible rankings. In essence, it is an expansion of the simplest link popularity calculation.

If you look at the Google PageRank tool:

* The Gray Bar in the PageRank tool indicates that a web page has not been added to the Google PageRank database, or Google has banned the website.

(to find out if your website has been banned type in "site:www.yourdomainurl.com" in the Google Search box. If the site appears, then the website in question has not been banned by Google.)

* PR0 to PR10. PR0 indicates that the web page has been added to the Google database, but it does not yet have any PageRank assigned to it, generally because there are not any PR value pages that link to it at this time.

If you are tracking PageRank from the Google toolbar, you should understand that the database that stores PageRank values is only updated once every 3-4 months.
While Google does use links to a web page to determine the web page's PR value, it is impossible these days to use Google to find what links are directed to your pages.

Building Link Popularity

In essence, even if search engines did not include link popularity as a portion of their ranking procedures, you would still want to develop links to your website.

Links are the pathways that keep 'net users moving from one website to another. Before the search engines became the all-powerful providers of Internet traffíc, the role of Internet promotion was to establish links on pages where a website's target audience is already going.

The goal of course is to get the person reading the page to clíck the link to the target website. With every visitor to a website being a potential customer, it makes good sense to get as many visitors to the website as possible, and that requires getting as many links as possible pointing to your website.

Google PageRank Basics

Since Google drives the largest portion of search traffíc on the Internet, it is important to understand their link popularity system.

All web pages on the Internet have been assigned a PageRank value by Google, according to the value of the web pages that link to them. This number is always changing as links are added, lost or change in value.

In short, the pages linking to your pages have their own Google PageRank value, according to who links to them, and the value of the pages that are linking to their web page. As the web pages linking to your web pages gain value, then your pages will also gain value in the Google PageRank algorithms.

As a Webmaster, it should be your goal to create as many links to your website, as you can. Eventually, most of those linked web pages with real value will gain their own PageRank, and they will pass some of their PR value to your web pages.

With article marketing, it is common for a new article placement to help the ranking of any website mentioned in the article to initially rise in the search rankings, then to drop away after a while after that initial impact.

Google's Main Index and Supplemental Listings

In order for the referenced website to get the PageRank it needs to climb in the search results, the web pages linking to it must have their own PageRank. As a single web page gains in link popularity and PageRank, the web page will also improve in the search results.

When a new article is placed for the first time, it is always placed on a "brand new" page on the Internet. New pages on the Internet, by their very nature, do not have any external links pointing to them and therefore, they do not have any established PageRank.

In recognition of this "brand new" status, Google is giving a pass to those new web pages. As far as the Google algorithm is concerned, these "brand new" pages might have value, but that value cannot yet be determined based on the number of links pointing to the page.

At the end of Google's "pass window", Google checks to see if this new page has developed any of its own inbound links and PageRank value. If the new web page has not developed any value of its own after a window of 30-45 days, then the new page will be moved from Google's main index to Google's Supplemental listings. If the new page has developed PageRank, then the page will remain in Google's main index.

Google say that having urls in the supplemental results doesn't mean that you have some sort of penalty - the main determining factor of whether a url is in the main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank.

Many web pages that have slipped into the Supplement listings will gain their own PageRank over the long term, and as such, those pages may return to Google's main index in the future. If articles are valuable resources to their readers, those articles will be given their own inbound links and therefore PageRank, but it takes time.

As a general rule, it appears that the average web page will gain a measure of PageRank somewhere in the range of 90 to 180 days from the day the web page was created. While not all pages will receive inbound links and PageRank, enough of them do to make the whole process worthwhile.


Yahoo & MSN


Earlier, Yahoo and MSN did not employ a link popularity calculation in their search algorithms. But when Google became the dominant search engine, then the underdog competitor must respond, if they have any desire to remain in the game.

After years of lagging behind Google, Yahoo and MSN decided it was time to add a link popularity calculation into their search algorithms.

As a Webmaster, your website will never gain link popularity if you do not take actions to íncrease the number of links pointing to your website. If the web page never accrues any link popularity, it will not gain PageRank, and it will not rise in the search engine rankings. If you fail to accomplish link popularity and search engine placement, then it will have been because of your inaction.
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